Monthly Archive for February, 2006

: February, 2006

Microsoft researcher Brian Meyers demonstrates the StepMail program (Grant M. Haller/P-I photo) Microsoft held a news conference on its Redmond campus Tuesday to show one of the projects that will be on display at the internal Microsoft Research TechFest event this week. It’s called the “Step User Interface,” one of the first results of a research group’s exploration of ways to use feet to control a computer. …

As Apple prepares to show some “fun new products” at its Cupertino headquarters this morning, Microsoft has scheduled its own news conference in Redmond this afternoon to unveil what it’s describing as a new technology. …

A group including IBM is detailing plans for an open-source identity management system, Project Higgins, that could provide an alternative to Microsoft’s InfoCard project. The approaches generally follow similar concepts. (The companies worked together on underlying standards for identity management.) …

Microsoft has confirmed plans to offer six main versions of Windows Vista, following the same outline as the line-up that leaked on the Web last weekend. See this story from Monday’s P-I, and detailed version info on the Microsoft site. …

Microsoft’s Office “New Era” ad campaign has been criticized for its questionable approach — comparing the company’s own customers to dinosaurs just because they haven’t upgraded to the latest version. But Microsoft doesn’t appear to giving up on it just yet. This photo posted Thursday on Flickr shows what appears (based on the tags) to be a promotion at a train station (apparently in Manchester, England) with someone posing as one of the creatures from the ads. …